Ahoy!

As you can probably tell, I'm vacationing from my bento making this week. I was rather busy this weekend with family fun and this week is another story. There are situations that come about while living on the Isle of Sheep. One of them being the annual TT race. It's the biggest two weeks on the island and if you're a resident here... a total nightmare. Half the island gets shut down because the whole place is the race course. It's crazy motorcycle people in leather pant nightmares every where you turn.

Because it's TT practice week I've been working from home. It's very dangerous to drive as the people that come here with their bikes pretend to be TT racers and almost kill you/themselves on the roads. Since I haven't been going to work and working here, packed lunches aren't really a necessity this week. I take my hour lunch break and whip us something up to eat. No time for pictures and my grilled cheeses are camera shy!

This past weekend I did have some culinary fun that I can share. I wanted to prepare some cupcakes for snow's sister and husband who are visiting the island for a while. It was her birthday Monday (same as my Mom's! Hooray for having to memorize less dates because I suck!) I knew their Mum was going to prepare a special cake so I didn't want to go too crazy. I got a yellow cake recipe off my lovely sis who is a baking genius. She wanted me to do this really complicated icing recipe, but I got spooked by ingredients/steps and went with a traditional buttercream.

Here's the thing, I think one of my most embarrassing moments as a human being was because of cake. I had just arrived on the island and was to attend a celebration dinner at his Mother's house. I was convinced she didn't like me and I was desperate to make a good impression. I decided to bring a cake.

See, in the US bringing a cake is good. Doesn't matter the cake, cake is a sign of peace. I at this point in my life, never made a cake from scratch and was still scared to death of the ovens here cooking in the foreign centigrade. I didn't want to make something gross, so I opted for a box cake. I made them all the time for family events... cake is cake right?

I show up to a lovely dinner and present my cake. It's cut and we all eat it. My future mother-in-law said to me, "Oh this is lovely... you'll have to give me the recipe". I couldn't lie and felt like a complete ass. "It's a box cake and the recipe is on the back because I suck" or something like that I must have muttered back. I failed as a future wife. Total wife fail!

I was determined to never let that happen again. It was the last time I'd made cake from a box. I haven't really prepared cake since then to be honest. We aren't big cake eaters. I never have been which is why I never learned how to make one from scratch. Strawberry shortcakes maybe (which are AWESOME and will share the recipe soon).

I knew I was going to make cakes. Kat deserved from scratch real cakes for being awesome so...armed with my sister's glorious recipe (listed below) I went all in spatulas blazing! They turned out delicious! Really, really tasty and better than any box! I did the icing and decorations to make them look like chocobos. She met her husband playing FFXI too, so it will always have a soft spot for all of us I think.

Here they are! Now, the really CUTE one on the left, snow made special for his sister for her birthday. He made it all by himself and made it look like a real chocobo sitting on a cake. Adorable eh?

Their Mum made a really spectacular cake that was delicious. They ate the cuppies later I think. We had a lovely picnic at the wildlife park and then strolled around looking at animals (mostly ducks). It was a super day and we all had fun. I think Kat liked her presents we (I) got her too. We usually give her silly things or Magical Trevor™ so I wanted her to have something special this year. Graduation and all. She's a smartie, more so than the ones on her cake!

Here's the recipes!

Scrummy Yellow Cake

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups white sugar
8 egg yolks
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour 2 - 8 inch round pans. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

2 In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, mixing just until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pans.

3 Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, (15-20 minutes as cuppies) or until tops spring back when lightly tapped. Cool 15 minutes before turning out onto cooling racks

I used a recipe from the Joy of Baking site for the icing. I've tried home made icing before and it failed. It's important you add the ingredients in a specific order and follow the directions exactly. It came out amazing following this recipe:

Buttercream Frosting:

2 cups (230 grams) confectioners sugar (icing or powdered sugar), sifted

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 tablespoons milk or light cream

Assorted food colors (if desired)

In an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, cream the butter until smooth and well blended. Add the vanilla extract. With the mixer on low speed, gradually beat in the sugar. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the milk and beat on high speed until frosting is light and fluffy (about 3-4 minutes). Add a little more milk or sugar, if needed. Tint the frosting with desired food color (I use the paste food coloring that is available at cake decorating
stores and party stores).

Makes about 12 cupcakes

WOO SUGAR COMA!

Congrats to Kat for her super spectacular A for all her hard work at school. Skewl makes you sooper smaaht! <3

Hello my bentolings!

Time for the mid week bento box. This week is going unusually fast for me. Probably all the working and bentoing. I could really use more time to sleep. Ah well, no rest for the crazy folk!

With the sun making an appearance lately, it's put me in the summer kind of mood. When I think summer, I think picnics outside and more importantly my Mom's awesome salads! I decided to make a USA style bento with summery picnic food. There is her tuna pasta salad that's so delicious. Mine never tastes quite as good as hers for some reason, but it's pretty close. Nice salad greens, yellow peppers and bits with some blanched broccoli and peas. The other side has strawberries that are so good, it's surprising there are even any left in the fridge. The little happy chick is made out of a mini corn muffin (another USA favorite food of mine) with a carrot beak, black sesame seed eyes and carrot feet.

I ordered some different shaped boxes today since they really are starting to look so similar to me. I may or may not have ordered 10+ other things while I was there *whistles innocently* I hope they arrive soon!

Next picnic salad on my hankering list is my Mom's potato salad. I don't like potato salad but I love hers. I can get it almost exactly like hers now that I've been making it every summer for years. It's one of those dishes that every time you bring it to a party, everyone then expects you to bring it to EVERY party you attend for the rest of your life. It's not too hard to make and I'll post the recipe when I get around to making it. The only trouble is cutting everything up and having your house smell like eggs for two days afterward. I then burn all sorts of candles to try and get rid of the eggie smell and then the house smells like spicy apple eggs... which is even more unpleasant. It's worth it though I assure you.

Time for jammies and kitten snuggles. Peas out!

Hola Bentolings!

Tonight's bento is just a nicely arranged one... no faces. I found some odd yellow tiny tomatoes and really nice veg at M&S today. Colorful lunches are always more fun! There is a little brioche roll with veggies and cheese hearts, salad with carrot sliver rolls and the other side is rice cubes wrapped in carrot slivers and nori strips with some tasty looking strawberries and almonds.

I think I need to invest in some different shaped boxes. These bentos are all starting to look the same to me. Maybe a nice square shaped one would do the trick. I think I already filled my J-list quota for the month though.

Looking forward to the bank holiday on Monday. Can't beat a three day weekend! Maybe the weather will be nice and we can have a bento picnic out in the park. I haven't seen any baby ducklings yet this year and that must be changed. I will arm myself with seeded bread!

Hope everyone is having a good week so far!

Ahoy Bentolings!

Normally I make nice bento boxes on Sunday afternoon/evening since I have all day and can take my time. This weekend however, we actually did outside things. The sun... it burns. Snow's sis and her husband are visiting so we ended up going walking in my favorite glen on Saturday. It was so green and lush that I felt like a forest nymph and had a strange longing to play a pan flute. Unfortunately I didn't have one in my purse so I just stuck to walking.

Sunday they came around to our town and we walked all over with melting ice cream cones in hand. It generally doesn't get very hot here, but Sunday was muy scorchio. We sat in the park for a while, not realizing my flesh was burning and I'd feel like I'd been dipped in lava all day today. We ended up at the house after I walked bare foot home after an unfortunate flip-flop situation. Great day, but no time for bento'ing.

So, tonight after work I decided to whip up some panda boxes for lunch tomorrow. These are dead simple ones, salad and onigiri with nori panda faces. I was out of carrots and other nicely colored items so it's not the most glamorous bento in the universe. It will be healthy and tasty though and that's what really counts.

Not too shabby for a work night box.

Here is a shot of a lovely waterfall in Glen Maye from Saturday:

Now I'm going to go attempt to take a shower even though my seared skin will cause me agony. It takes me back to when I was little and we'd go to the ocean to visit my Nana. I would get so sun burned that I looked like a little lobster with a bowl cut. Nana would end up coating me in vinegar mixed with ice water. I'm half tempted to do this on my back, but I'm pretty sure smelling like the local chippy is way worse than burned skin.

Ahoy Bentolings!

****update! snow said comments are fixed! Please comment away and hopefully it doesn't break. Hooray!***

The dust is slowly clearing on my flu-plague. I'm feeling slightly less undead, which is great! I miss the good old days of being sick. When you're a kid and have a sick day, you get to stay home in bed rocking the cozy jammies. No worries about dinner to cook, laundry to do, work to be done. Just game show bliss and canned soup lunch. Those were the days. Now I have to do all these adult wife things and just feel like crap while doing them.

My Nana always said that when she died, she was coming back as a man. Now I kinda understand where she was coming from! I still think coming back as a house cat is a better gig. Less thinking in the pants. Cats don't wear pants.

SO, feeling 75% better. I decided today that I wouldn't focus on the aesthetics of tomorrow's lunch. I'd focus on the taste and experiment with recipes instead. I work full time, so doing both just isn't happening. I have been wanting to try this recipe for sweet potato puff things that I found in a book. I followed the recipe to the letter and something didn't feel right with it. I'm not sure I had the correct type of potatoes? Everything else was spot on, and I know I can follow a recipe, so something wasn't correct. I suspect what wasn't right and will probably try and alter the recipe at a later date.

They don't look as glorious as they should have, but believe it or not, they taste divine! Snow came down to vulture hover over me and saw these tiny cupcake things cooling on the counter. He of course asked to eat one (as it was already halfway in his mouth). He said they were delicious, so I guess that's good? I still want to modify the recipe at a later date.

I'll call this an avant garde bento rather than mad scientist. I had no plan, no idea, just moved things around and thought about what would be tasty. These are lunches and not art projects after all. I'm trying to develop my skill in the flavor department just as much as the visual.

Mini cube onigiri with a side of my Hoi sin noodles and a shaped tomato on top. Sweet potato puffs, salad, cheese crisps and side of fruit on the other side with the token Happy Panda cookie for my tallest (my husband).

On a side note, I've been really dedicated to blogging on a regular basis as of late. I'm trying to fit it into my routine, which is filled with all sorts of other dances. It's funny how your pets adapt themselves to your new routine as well. So far, every bento blog I've written... I have had Yuki sleeping in between my arms as I type. It's her new thing and as soon as I sit down to type, there she is. She plops down on the desk, buries her face in my arm and listens to me type. I have to say, it makes blogging much more enjoyable as she's far more adorable than any bento I could ever hope to produce. It looks something like this:

YES I BLOG IN A PINK FUZZY ROBE! WHAT OF IT? *karate stance*

Thanks for reading ^_^ May kittens rest on your typing arms.

Ahoy Bentolings!

Spring has sprung and so have all the hedgehogs or hedgies as we call them in our house. I had a discussion the other day about Hedgehog Awareness Week, which is an actual thing here. It was the first week of May. According to the Isle of Man Courier (the only local newspaper), if you find a hedgie stuck in a hole, you should not reach in and grab him/her. You're supposed to construct a tiny ladder and lower it down for them to use and climb out. Is it wrong to hope I will find a hedgehog in a hole some day so I can construct a tiny ladder and see what happens? Probably.

Anyway, the theme of today's bento is hedgies! We have a soft spot for them in our house because Yuki's favorite toy in the world is a tiny stuffed hedgehog named (you guessed it) Hedgie. She brings it into bed with us, and carries it all over the house. It's the cutest thing you'll ever see.

I made the hedgies out of hard boiled eggs dyed brown with soy sauce and soy rice, with egg paws and nori faces. There is a bit of rice in the "garden" with veggies. The other side has chicken rolls and steamed broccoli with salad. The chicken rolls were a recipe that Pikko was nice enough to share with me. I modified it a bit, but it's pounded out chicken with baby spinach and fresh basil. You roll it up and bread via flour, egg then Panko. Pan fry in a bit of olive oil and holy crow... talk about delicious! I tried making enough for two rounds of boxes but snow ate every left over piece.

His

Mine

It was fun but slightly challenging to get the hedgies to work. I think they're pretty cute though. It's not exactly what I had in mind, but the rice wasn't cooperating like I would have liked. Also, my new favorite condiment is Furikake. I got some with my last Jlist order and it's so incredible, I'm sprinkling it on everything in site. I can't describe the taste, but it's really divine. On rice, it's absolutely perfect. There are loads of flavors, but this is the one I use. Here's a pic of the bottle:

I'm starting a nasty cold so, I'm not sure how bentotastic this week will be. I'm loading up on vitamins and juice so fingers crossed it just goes away before I'm curled up in bed feeling sorry for myself. I'm off to a date with the Night Nurse™ <3

Ahoy civilians!

Sadly, no bentorific pic/update this evening. I don't think I can do them every night for fear of burning out. Tonight was a big work out night and I have a few books I'd like to look through and get some recipe ideas going for the next ones. I really want to try these sweet potato puff thingies, but I need to find very small cupcake papers to put them in. *glee* I plan to venture out into the world tomorrow and hunt some. There really isn't enough time in the day when you work full time.

It's an odd week. Work is feeling like that song you hear in the circus when all the clowns get out of the clown car and there's just colorful, kind of scary chaos all around you. The bento'ing and blog re-design have helped tame the stress though. Speaking of which, looks different in here doesn't it?

Snow and I have been working hard getting things up and working properly. I'm pretty much just drawing silly things and playing with colors and he's doing all the MT wacky back end voodoo to make it work. It's coming along nicely I think! Still needs some tinkering and a lick of paint here and there, but progress always gives you that warm fuzz. I will warn though, that during builds or code botches (most likely by me) the site could look totally broken, if showing at all. We're trying to get comments up and running too.

Previously when comments were allowed, the server got hacked so badly it was a miracle it made it back alive. So, my ninja is trying to come up with a secure way of doing things. Hence the silly captcha in the email link in the bio. Last night he put a security protocol on the server so strict that I couldn't even add a new entry. You'd think I was trading government secrets for nazi gold it's so locked down. Seriously, it's just a site about my lunches, cats and dreams about ducks.

Stay tuned for more bento fun tomorrow, and hopefully the server doesn't explode.